Chrisonomicon

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Saturday's excursion to the mountains was met by an invasion of enormous, wet clumps of snow, appropriately forbidding as M and I made our way to what would be a Barmecidal timeshare presentation, replete with voluble, smarmy salespeople and ostentatiously decorated rooms. The trip was worth braving weather and salespitches, though, as we left with two tickets to hopefully-sunny, southern California.

Meanwhile, it continued to snow. We were trapped in the stuff, held up for a night in the lodge across the street, making the best of it with a bottle of wine and relentless episodes of Trading Spaces. A weekend snowbound debacle was miraculously avoided by M's meticulous driving and a quick break in the weather, allowing us to arrive and depart with little trouble despite fear-mongering weather reports heard on our return.

My fears of avalanches, snowy asphyxiation, or being stranded in wintry deserts, which would normally seem to serve as the driest kind of creative fodder, made for nothing but an interesting, angst-ridden trip. I made little to no headway on the book. As I started wondering if my priorities are jumbled, my days being doors that hinge on my word count or the latest downloaded dance remix or weekend plans with M or who hooked up with whom at the club this weekend, I realized that even though I may have grown soft on the outside, reliant on social superfluousity, my heart remains strong, tethered to the earth, armored, able to withstand harsh wilderness and grey solitude, the night of failure and the desert heat of truth.